I don't share the view that government is the only way to do certain things efficiently. I'm certainly not happy with schools, the post office, social security being bankrupt, or the way medicare is handled. Privitization I believe does things much more efficiently.

I keep hearing arguments like this, and there's not really any follow through to explain how or why that such is the case. Its disappointing really as I'm one of those odd folks susceptible to logical arguments. Mind taking it from the level of believing and trying out a little proving?

Yes when you look at the public schools that are government run, kids graduate not knowing how to read.

The kids involved are typically in Special Education. The government puts much effort into educating kids with 'special needs" of any kind -- "special needs" that may include impairment of hearing or sight or handicaps not related to low intelligence. Privately-run schools could never meet the needs of the retarded.

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The post office is slow, inefficient, and sends mail to the wrong people.

FedEx and UPS will deliver mail, but at roughly ten to twenty times the rate that the USPS charges. I assure you that if I wanted a parcel with sensitive or high-value material in it I would send it by one of the premium services. But sending a check to a credit card issuer? The mail system so far has served me well. Come to think of it, the check that I send to a credit-card company is sensitive... but I can't imagine anyone in the postal system ever filching the check. You would NEVER send a greeting card by Federal Express.

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Social security and medicare which I'm a fan of are both bankrupt.

Social Security operates at a lower cost than does a typical life insurance company. Medicare is far less expensive in its administration than is the private health-insurance cartel -- so much less that Medicare for all would be an economic boon to all but private insurers.

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The DMV takes forever and causes the cost of insurance to go up.

Sure, but healing from an auto accident caused by an incompetent driver also can take seemingly forever, too. Without the DMV as a screener of drivers auto accident rates, property damage, and collision-related deaths and injuries would also skyrocket, and just think what that would do to insurance rates.

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The health care industry is completely privatized right now and it is the envy of the world.

Really? Name a country that imitates our profits-first, cost-loading system for paying for it.

I don't deny that our medical care system is great for those who have unlimited funds or are lucky enough to have first-rate insurance or access to the charitable section. That said, our system prices people into the grave. Few peoples who have something else would tolerate that.

You can also claim that our economic system attracts the best physicians due to low taxes overall. In essence, physicians in America keep more of what they make than do those in any other country in the First World. Even with President Obama's effort to make health insurance less costly, America will be an attractive place for physicians because we have lower income taxes, lower sales taxes, and no VAT.

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When you said from believing to prove, were you thinking of Plato's theory on the 4 levels of knowledge; imagining, believing, thinking, knowing? I'm a platonist myself.

Plato's theory of the four levels of knowledge cannot support partisan politics of any kind.

I'm not sure if I've answered this before, but probably not. Reagan's and Clinton's approvals were in the toilet in early 1983/1995 (the equivalent of early 2011 for Obama) and they still got reelected in landslides. Obama probably will be reelected once the recovery starts recovering more strongly.

News cycle. President Obama was right about the Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero (the First Amendment allows no other interpretation because it has no exceptions for popular judgment of other people's religion) even if his statement in support of the Islamic Cultural Center is unpopular. Dwight Eisenhower was right about Brown v. Board of Education and the desegregation of Little Rock schools even if such helped him not in the least.

Once Americans see what the doctrinaire GOP has to offer they will see things differently. Because it has no means of bring back the Dubya-era boom in real estate and crooked behavior by lenders and related parties, it too has no clue on how to get prosperity for more than about 5% of the people -- and that by $crewing the rest of us badly.

News cycle. President Obama was right about the Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero (the First Amendment allows no other interpretation because it has no exceptions for popular judgment of other people's religion) even if his statement in support of the Islamic Cultural Center is unpopular. Dwight Eisenhower was right about Brown v. Board of Education and the desegregation of Little Rock schools even if such helped him not in the least.

Once Americans see what the doctrinaire GOP has to offer they will see things differently. Because it has no means of bring back the Dubya-era boom in real estate and crooked behavior by lenders and related parties, it too has no clue on how to get prosperity for more than about 5% of the people -- and that by $crewing the rest of us badly.

Why don't you believe in polls? News cycle? It must be a very long news cycle, lasting almost 2 years, considering he's dropped ~25 points in the polls since he began his term.

News cycle. President Obama was right about the Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero (the First Amendment allows no other interpretation because it has no exceptions for popular judgment of other people's religion) even if his statement in support of the Islamic Cultural Center is unpopular. Dwight Eisenhower was right about Brown v. Board of Education and the desegregation of Little Rock schools even if such helped him not in the least.

Once Americans see what the doctrinaire GOP has to offer they will see things differently. Because it has no means of bring back the Dubya-era boom in real estate and crooked behavior by lenders and related parties, it too has no clue on how to get prosperity for more than about 5% of the people -- and that by $crewing the rest of us badly.

Why don't you believe in polls? News cycle? It must be a very long news cycle, lasting almost 2 years, considering he's dropped ~25 points in the polls since he began his term.

When it is over an event of transitory importance it reflects the news cycle and nothing else. Do you remember how President Obama's approval ratings sank when the Gusher in the Gulf was going badly and that his approval ratings rebounded afterward? The news events had no connection to any Obama policy.

The very high polls came from when people had unbounded optimism that every incoming President has. No, you cannot safely extrapolate every sudden trend safely. That the high temperature for Chicago on January 26 is 25 F and 20F on January 27 does not imply that the high temperature will be 15F on January 28, or that Chicago will have an unusually chilly summer. Tell a stockbroker that you want to buy into the market on the margin because you just saw three straight days of gain and you will be laughed at.

The last two Presidents to have practically no legislative agenda -- George H. W. Bush and Jimmy Carter -- kept higher poll numbers longer than Obama and still lost bids for re-election. Any President with any legislative agenda will step on some toes. You can be sure that Teddy Roosevelt was extremely unpopular among manufacturers of patent medicines that the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906) made unmarketable.

As I said in 2009, President Obama will run on his record and win or run from his record and lose. He obviously can't run from his record anymore, so he loses only if something unusual happens for an incumbent President:

1. A derogatory scandal erupts with him at the center.

2. We have another economic meltdown much like that of September 2008.

3. A massive change of ideology -- let us say a revival of the Religious Right -- occurs. Such would take far more than a week.

In much the same way Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton's presidencies were pretty much over after 1970, 1982, and 1994 respectively. I'm still surprised how every historian has ignored the presidencies of George McGovern, Walter Mondale, and Bob Dole.

The 1970 and 1982 recessions were pre- liberalization recessions so there was a quick rebound. By 1994, the recession had already been over for 3 years, and it took another 2 years for voters to feel it. That is 5 years total. So the equivalent of 1996 in this scenario, assuming the recession ended in 2009, would be 2014. Too late.

The economy we have today, unlike the one in 1982, has gone through "restructuring" and "liberalization". It is a child of the Reagan revolution, the NAFTA revolution, the WTO revolution. The jobs ain't coming back, or ain't coming back fast enough.

I think Obama is f--ked, and I will say it now. He was f--ked from Day One. (Short of the Fed printing $5 trillion and him somehow convincing the nation of the need for a $2.5 trillion stimulus, but that opportunity has long since passed).

"It's sad, but the economy makes presidents seem like geniuses or clowns more than it should. I think FDR basically did a good job with the banking system, but the fact remains that after 3 years of recession, the economy had probably bottomed out; if Herbert Hoover had taken office in 1930 instead of 1928, he might well have gone down in history as a great president. Carter, too, got painted as an economic clown, even though he started the deregulation and liberalization that Reagan finished. Unfortunately, he also presided over an ugly, ugly recession induced by Paul Volcker's war on inflation.

Conversely, Bill Clinton may have done many good things, but he didn't make any meaningful contribution to the tech bubble, which drove the economy, and especially tax revenues, to soaring heights.

On election night in 2008, I saw a bunch of people twittering some variant of "It's 1932!" This also seems to have been what Democrats in Congress thought--they seem to have believed that they had near-FDR levels of political capital to work with. But as I said at the time, the relevant comparison was not 1932, but 1929. Financial crises take a while to work through, and this one may well see Obama leaving office after one term, many of his policies tainted by association with a recession he didn't cause and couldn't ever have done much about.(It also may not. I think the economy is going to be stagnant for a few years as we work out our balance sheet issues and reallocate labor from the housing market. But economic prognostication is a dismally poor science.)

Whichever way it works out, one side or another will overattribute the 2012 economy to Obama and the Democrats. The fact is, the president can't do much more than tinker around the edges of a $14 trillion economy--for which we can humbly thank God every day. If presidents really did have the kind of power over the economy that their friends or enemies try to claim, the world would be a much more terrifying place."

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It's beautiful how a few short paragraphs describe everything you need to know about politics of the Obama Presidency. Forget everything ever written about health care, Mosque, oil spill, tea party, etc. etc. etc., Megan McArdle has just explained everything relevant.

In 2013, an extreme right wing Republican will be elected President by a huge margin, probably Sarah Palin, with a sizeable Republican majority in Congress, due solely to the economy. By 2016 the economy will have recovered enough to guarantee said Republican President's re-election. By the end of this term hard core conservatives activists will have a majority of the Supreme Court and start overturning the Warren era decisions. Racism will make a come back as blacks will be seen as incompetent and inferior due to Obama's failure. The young people who followed Obama will carry their disappoint with them for the rest of their lives and never be as idealistic or liberal again. All of Obama's policies, indeed all of liberalism, will be tainted by his perceived failure, regardless of what their merits might have been.

Basically, what happens in this country every day is getting played out on a grand scale. Spoiled, privileged Yalies like George Bush things up and get bailed out by their parents. The black janitor gets called in to clean up the mess, and when he's done he goes back to his working class apartment while George and his friends go and something else up. Obama is the janitor. During the Bush years, the private sector made trillions of bad loans, the federal budget structure became radically vulnerable to a downturn, and we got into two horrific wars funded by the Chinese who also took our jobs. But things seemed to be going well because the housing bubble kept going. Just as things were falling apart, Bush left office and told the janitor to come in and fix things up. After four years, he'll be thrown out.

Logged

A New Chapter"I feel like Paulette Revere  the recession is coming, the recession is coming! - Hillary Clinton, April 3, 2008

B. The Republicans are going to have to pick one hell of a candidate to run in 2012, someone that isn't Palin, Huckabee, Romney, Jindal, or Gingrich. Someone fresh and new and isn't so much of a Hardcore right-wing nutjob, and Ive yet to really see someone.

C. Obama ran a great campaign in 2008 and will probably do so again in 2012 with the same people he surrounded himself in 2008. Also, going back to Republicans picking a good candidate, they cant run their platform on scare tactics and shameless attacks about Obama's personal life, which doesn't seem possible with the way they are acting currently. It needs to be about current events, the economy, and what people are really looking for for answers.

B. The Republicans are going to have to pick one hell of a candidate to run in 2012, someone that isn't Palin, Huckabee, Romney, Jindal, or Gingrich. Someone fresh and new and isn't so much of a Hardcore right-wing nutjob, and Ive yet to really see someone.

C. Obama ran a great campaign in 2008 and will probably do so again in 2012 with the same people he surrounded himself in 2008. Also, going back to Republicans picking a good candidate, they cant run their platform on scare tactics and shameless attacks about Obama's personal life, which doesn't seem possible with the way they are acting currently. It needs to be about current events, the economy, and what people are really looking for for answers.

A. Well you better hope the unemployment rate drops at least 2% (if not more) within the next 2 years.

B. No idea why liberals on this forum underestimate (or is that misunderestimate? lol) Mitt Romney. He's a strong, viable candidate, and the best option out there. He's got my vote.

C. Obama in 2008 had a message of hope and change, he had no other substantial record to run on. Being the first black president, while it shouldn't have mattered, made a difference too. Add to the fact that 2008 was a vote against the GOP and NOT a vote for the liberal agenda. It was a vote against McCain more than it was a vote for Obama.

That being said, Obama can't run on any of the above in 2012. He can't use silly abstractions like hope and change. He now has a pretty dismal (reference: current approval polls for the nation and on specific policies) record. And if unemployment and the economy is still pretty much stagnant, he will have no chance no matter who the GOP nominates.

It's amazing. The Democrats should have been able to dominate for at least a decade after coming off of what Bush seemingly did to the country (highly under rated president, but that's neither here nor there). Yet they're facing crushing defeats in November and a chance of losing the WH in 2012. If someone predicted that in 2008, we would have labeled them crazy. The fact that the GOP hasn't won voters over on their own is a concern, but the liberals should be worried about how badly they handled the last 2-4 years.

B. The Republicans are going to have to pick one hell of a candidate to run in 2012, someone that isn't Palin, Huckabee, Romney, Jindal, or Gingrich. Someone fresh and new and isn't so much of a Hardcore right-wing nutjob, and Ive yet to really see someone.

C. Obama ran a great campaign in 2008 and will probably do so again in 2012 with the same people he surrounded himself in 2008. Also, going back to Republicans picking a good candidate, they cant run their platform on scare tactics and shameless attacks about Obama's personal life, which doesn't seem possible with the way they are acting currently. It needs to be about current events, the economy, and what people are really looking for for answers.

A. Well you better hope the unemployment rate drops at least 2% (if not more) within the next 2 years.

Combat operations over in Iraq, the President will have to address economic issues. If Republicans balk, then he can use them as foils by running against Congress.

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B. No idea why liberals on this forum underestimate (or is that misunderestimate? lol) Mitt Romney. He's a strong, viable candidate, and the best option out there. He's got my vote.

Flip-flop, flip-flop. Your opinion matters not in the least -- no more than mine.

Romney has the best chance to win if President Obama is a disaster. But is Obama a disaster?

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C. Obama in 2008 had a message of hope and change, he had no other substantial record to run on. Being the first black president, while it shouldn't have mattered, made a difference too. Add to the fact that 2008 was a vote against the GOP and NOT a vote for the liberal agenda. It was a vote against McCain more than it was a vote for Obama.

1. Barack Obama ran as an unabashed liberal.

2. He made promises of legislative activity and has gotten his legislative agenda passed -- one of the strongest indicators of an effective president. The last president so effective at that was Ronald Reagan. He made promises and achieved them.

3. He remains an optimist. Good pattern.

4. He has gotten American combat units out of Iraq. The mission really is accomplished -- this time. To be sure, I can't quite understand what good we were doing in Iraq after we overthrew Saddam Hussein. But that is over. President Obama has undone the second-most egregious blunder of his predecessor.

5. Now he has more legitimacy with which to deal with the economy.

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That being said, Obama can't run on any of the above in 2012. He can't use silly abstractions like hope and change. He now has a pretty dismal (reference: current approval polls for the nation and on specific policies) record. And if unemployment and the economy is still pretty much stagnant, he will have no chance no matter who the GOP nominates.

Americans will be satisfied with genuine progress. Watch the deficits shrink. The exit from Iraq will sink in, and Americans will get more confidence.

Underinvestment? Corporate America is now playing a gambit by hoarding cash instead of hiring and investing. The privileged classes would hire and invest again if they got their way (for them, going beyond Dubya-era tax cuts, maybe even exemption of the rich from taxes?), just as the hack philosopher Ayn Rand suggested. The GOP is trying to slow the economy so that Americans will turn to economic abusers of recent years as "saviors".

So when the Dubya-era tax cuts expire in 2011 when the Democrats still hold majorities in both Houses in Congress, the gambit fails. Then it is back to normal.

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It's amazing. The Democrats should have been able to dominate for at least a decade after coming off of what Bush seemingly did to the country (highly under rated president, but that's neither here nor there). Yet they're facing crushing defeats in November and a chance of losing the WH in 2012. If someone predicted that in 2008, we would have labeled them crazy. The fact that the GOP hasn't won voters over on their own is a concern, but the liberals should be worried about how badly they handled the last 2-4 years.